Best Holiday Gifts for Traveling Therapists

Travel nurses and therapists lead a distinctive lifestyle, one that may seem wild to those outside the realm of healthcare travel. If you’re fortunate enough to have a travel healthcare professional in your life and wish to express your appreciation, consider these gift suggestions. As a travel speech-language pathologist with over a decade of experience, I’ve handpicked these items on this holiday gift guide for travel nurses and therapists based on their practicality and the joy they bring.

Gift Cards To Their Favorite Places

Healthcare travelers travel from town to town with all of their belongings in their cars. Many times, getting more gifts and stuff can weigh them down more than they bring joy to their lives. 

Instead of sending a physical gift, a gift card to your traveler’s favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or grocery store can mean a lot and go a long way. I love getting Whole Foods and Target gift cards. They always get used fast.

For the traveler who wants to relax and be pampered, find a spa in their town where you can purchase a gift card. Having a spa day on you is the ultimate luxury.

Ideas for travel nurse and therapists gift cards:

• Grocery store
• Coffee shop
• Target/Walmart
• Amazon
• Spa
• Restaurant

Food Delivery

Sending food to your favorite traveling healthcare professional is the ultimate gift of love.

If you are not close enough to gift your traveler some home-cooked food, there are many companies available that send yummy goodies. 

Some of my favorite food deliveries:

• Edible Arrangements (Fun fruit baskets)
• Goldbelly (Nationwide restaurant delivery)
• Harry and David (Fruits, cheeses, meats, and sweet treats)
• Legal Seafood Marketplace (New England lobster and goodies) 

You can also surprise your favorite traveler with delivery from a local restaurant on DoorDash or GrubHub. Just coordinate with them to make sure that they will be home to receive the delivery. 

National Parks Pass

You can give your traveler the gift of adventure and nature through a National Parks Pass. For only $80 per year, you can gift your traveler an annual pass that gives entrance to all of the national parks across the United States. It’s a great deal and something that invites adventures. I buy a pass every year and have it on hand for parks.

Exploring Joshua Tree National Park

Sound Machine 

A good night’s sleep is important to everybody, especially travelers. Travelers don’t know what their housing is going to be like from assignment to assignment. As I write this post, the noise of a hammer drill from the street is overtaking my living room. Sometimes we have multiple roommates or live in hotels with thin walls.  Or, we work night shift and need to sleep during the day.

For these reasons, a sound machine is a great gift to give any traveler. They are small, portable, and can drown out the street noise to help us get a good night’s sleep. I’ve been sleeping with a sound machine for over 2 years and it makes a big difference in the quality of my sleep. 

Headphones

Headphones are always a great gift, especially for travelers. Airpods sadly get lost in travel and noise-cancelling headphones are great for when we need to tune out the world around us.

She’s Birdie Personal Safety Alarm

A sad reality of travel is that travelers need to take self-defense seriously. The She’s Birdie personal safety alarm is a device that the traveler in your life can carry on their keychain. It has an alarm that they can pull and offers a loud ring to help create a diversion and deter an attack.

Door Stop Alarm

Another personal safety device is these handy door stop alarms. They slide under any door and are extremely sensitive to movement and loud. The loud ringing can wake up a traveler in the middle of the night and alert them of somebody opening their door and hopefully prevent that person from entering. 

A Planner Just for Travelers

Okay, I might be a little biased here because I designed the planner, but I 100% stand behind this planner being the PERFECT gift for any traveler in your life. It is the best planner designed with travelers in mind and gives pages for planning your packing lists, assignments, CEUs, and licenses. 

It also gives you space to plan by the year, month, and week. The weekly pages are my favorite to stay organized while I travel. 

Keurig Mini

This is for the coffee lovers. I’ve gone through many different coffee pots as a traveler and I love the Keurig Mini. It brews one cup at a time and is easy to transport and store. There are no glass parts, which makes it more durable for packing and transport. We often don’t have a lot of room in our kitchens and this can fit anywhere. It’s also great to pack up and take on weekend adventures to Airbnb. I take this with me to hotels because you never know what the coffee situation will be. 

Tickets To a Concert or Event in Town

Travelers collect experiences. Find something exciting coming to their location, maybe a concert, sporting event, or show, and buy them tickets. The only tricky part here is that you might not know their work schedule. 

For Work

This list makes travel nursing and travel therapy sound like all fun and adventure. If you want to get a gift for the traveler in your life for work, here are some suggestions. 

• Badge Reels
• Compression Socks
• Scrubs
• A nice water bottle like a Stanley Cup

These gifts cater to the unique needs and preferences of travel nurses and travel therapists, offering them comfort, convenience, and a touch of home on their journey.